"There's enough
alcohol in one year's yeild of an acre of potatoes to drive the
machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years."
- Henry Ford

Pioneering automotive engineer Henry Ford held many patents on
automotive mechanisms, but is best remembered for helping devise
the factory assembly approach to production that revolutionized
the auto industry by greatly reducing the time required to assemble
a car.

Born in Wayne County, Michigan, Ford showed
an early interest in mechanics, constructing his first steam engine
at the age of 15. In 1893 he built his first internal combustion
engine, a small one-cylinder gasoline model, and in 1896 he built
his first automobile.

In June 1903 Ford helped establish Ford Motor
Company. He served as president of the company from 1906 to 1919
and from 1943 to 1945.

In addition to earning numerous patents on
auto mechanisms, Ford served as a vice president of the Society
of Automotive Engineers when it was founded in 1905 to standardize
U.S. automotive parts. 1

Fuel of the Future

When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter
that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925,
he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive
industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit
like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust
-- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every
bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough
alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the
machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

Ford recognized the utility of the hemp plant.
He constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber, and even ran
the car on ethanol made from hemp. Ford knew that hemp could
produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.

Ford's optimistic appraisal of cellulose and
crop based ethyl alcohol fuel can be read in several ways. First,
it can be seen as an oblique jab at a competitor. General Motors
had come to considerable grief that summer of 1925 over another
octane boosting fuel called tetra-ethyl lead, and government officials
had been quietly in touch with Ford engineers about alternatives
to leaded gasoline additives. Secondly, by 1925 the American farms
that Ford loved were facing an economic crisis that would later
intensify with the depression. Although the causes of the crisis
were complex, one possible solution was seen in creating new markets
for farm products. With Ford's financial and political backing,
the idea of opening up industrial markets for farmers would be
translated into a broad movement for scientific research in agriculture
that would be labelled "Farm Chemurgy." 2

Why Henry's plans were delayed for more
than a half century:

Ethanol has been known as a fuel for many decades.
Indeed, when Henry Ford designed the Model T, it was his expectation
that ethanol, made from renewable biological materials, would
be a major automobile fuel. However, gasoline emerged as the dominant
transportation fuel in the early twentieth century because of
the ease of operation of gasoline engines with the materials then
available for engine construction, a growing supply of cheaper
petroleum from oil field discoveries, and intense lobbying by
petroleum companies for the federal government to maintain steep
alcohol taxes. Many bills proposing a National energy program
that made use of Americas vast agricultural resources (for fuel
production) were killed by smear campaigns launched by vested
petroleum interests. One noteworthy claim put forth by petrol
companies was that the U.S. government's plans "robbed taxpayers
to make farmers rich".

Gasoline had many disadvantages as an automotive
resource. The "new" fuel had a lower octane rating than
ethanol, was much more toxic (particularly when blended with tetra-ethyl
lead and other compounds to enhance octane), generally more dangerous,
and contained threatening air pollutants. Petroleum was more likely
to explode and burn accidentally, gum would form on storage surfaces
and carbon deposits would form in combustion chambers of engines.
Pipelines were needed for distribution from "area found"
to "area needed". Petroleum was much more physically
and chemically diverse than ethanol, necessitating complex refining
procedures to ensure the manufacture of a consistent "gasoline"
product.

However, despite these environmental flaws,
fuels made from petroleum have dominated automobile transportation
for the past three-quarters of a century. There are two key reasons:
First, cost per kilometer of travel has been virtually the sole
selection criteria. Second, the large investments made by the
oil and auto industries in physical capital, human skills and
technology make the entry of a new cost-competitive industry difficult.

Until very recently, environmental concerns have been largely
ignored. All of that is finally changing as consumers demand fuels
such as ethanol, which are much better for the environment and
human health.3

Practically anything we make from a polluting,
nonrenewable hydrocarbon like oil or coal can be made from a relatively
clean, renewable carbohydrate like hemp. Henry Ford used to preach
this in the 1940s. "Why use up the forests, which were centuries
in the making, and the mines, which required ages to lay down,
if we can get the equivalent of forests and mineral products in
the annual growth of the fields?" he asked. Ford, who had
a vision of "growing automobiles from the soil," even
produced a demonstration model with body parts partially made
with hemp.

In the 1930s the Ford Motor Company also saw
a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass
conversion plant, that included hemp, at their Iron Mountain facility
in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel,
tar, pitch, ethyl-acetate and creosote. All fundamental ingredients
for modern industry and now supplied by oil-related industries.

The difference is that the vegetable source
is renewable, cheap and clean, and the petroleum or coal sources
are limited, expensive and dirty. By volume, 30% of the hemp seed
contains oil suitable for high-grade diesel fuel as well as aircraft
engine and precision machine oil.
Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily
renewable fuel. And if you think methanol means compromise, you
should know that many modern race cars run on methanol.